Hoarders – Spooky or Scary

We have seen the news and perhaps have had a neighbor that was the “hoarder”.

Occasionally we get a glimpse inside the hoarders homes and properties – we look in amazement at a tiny path way that weaves thru the house – stuff that fills every room to the ceiling, a garage that is permanently locked and filled with treasures from someone else’s trash cans or a backyard that is filled to the fences with every imaginable item.

We voyeuristically look to discover what might be valuable… surely in such a pile of stuff must be valuable items… collectibles… or a forgotten and irreplaceable painting from a lost age.

Sometimes we shake our heads trying to understand how one mans trash is another mans treasure but mostly we simply keep to ourselves and try not to create an additional headache in our lives or that of another.

Symptoms and behavior, reasons, and quality of life issues are all very much a reality in this complicated activity. Beyond collecting… hoarding is a very real and frequently difficult part of life for many people. Families, friends, and neighbors often are afraid of the underlying reasons for hoarding… what compulsions trigger this behavior… what actually lives in the piles of stuff, unseen but always imagined!

A few months back Dumpstr Xpress received a call from a man I will call Ray, who on behalf of himself and several neighbors had banded together to help their neighbor start the difficult process of cleaning up the front yard. The widow lady had always been a wonderful neighbor but on the loss of her husband had just started “collecting stuff”.

The neighborhood had expended all efforts at trying to get help from the city and had finally decided to get busy and make improvements. The question directed to us was whether we could help somehow… maybe reducing rates or even sending a cleanup crew.

The dumpster rental business isn’t really very glamorous… just steel containers delivered by big trucks… but at the end of the day, sometimes we get the unexpected opportunity to assist!